Grand National 2011: Sam Waley-Cohen hopes it is Oscar Time as he eyes first Gold Cup-National amateur double

How do you describe the challenge of piloting half a ton of horseflesh over
Aintree’s unforgiving eight-foot fences? Sam Waley-Cohen, the amateur winner
of last month’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, has a vivid answer. In his words,
riding the Grand National is like performing 30 bungee jumps in a row.

As a businessman of independent means, the son of a baronet and the grandson of a former Mayor of London, Waley-Cohen does not need to be here at all. He could take the safe option, and stay in his plush Chelsea townhouse with his spreadsheets and his “equicizer” — the mechanical horse he uses to keep himself fit.

But Waley-Cohen is a sucker for all things edgy and daring. And after his remarkable ride at Cheltenham – where his horse, Long Run, beat off strong competition from Denman and Kauto Star – he will surely reach a new peak of adrenalin-fuelled excitement should he complete the double on Oscar Time today.

Only seven jockeys have ever won the Gold Cup and the National in the same season – none of them an amateur. Yet Oscar Time is high up the list of favourites, and Waley-Cohen reckons he is among the 10 horses who have a realistic shot at the trophy.

“When I first went over to Ireland to have a look at Oscar Time, I wouldn’t have picked him as a natural for the National, because he isn’t very big, and he doesn’t look like he can carry much weight,” said Waley-Cohen this week. “But then I rode him and I thought ‘Ooh, he’s got real personality and spring.’ If he can jump around clear, he ought to be there at the end, within the first three or four.”

Since his success on Long Run, Waley-Cohen has not had much time to sit back and bask. Within two weeks of his victory on March 18, he had added a new practice — his ninth — to Portman Dental, the company he founded three years ago to resolve the terrible state of the nation’s teeth.

And then there is the wedding to arrange. He has the date all lined up — the first Saturday in June — for his union with party organiser Bella Ballin. In the meantime, he hopes that his future wife will not pick up too many grand ideas from the royal wedding, which they are due to attend next month.

By now, you should be aware that this is no ordinary jockey. When I met him, he was sitting at his dining table, fielding constant phone calls and fiddling with financial reports on his laptop. Above his head hung a huge print by the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, with the word “CRASH” in bold type. “I spend a lot of time crashing,” he says. “Though so far I’ve always been lucky enough to walk away.”

Some would say that Waley-Cohen is lucky to have been born into such a privileged existence, but he has certainly made the most of his opportunities. He also knows that luck can turn against you in an instant, whether on the racetrack or in the outside world. His younger brother, Thomas, died of bone cancer at the age of just 20 — a tragedy that has only fuelled Sam’s extraordinary appetite for life.

However skilled he is as a jockey — and the experts say his ride on Long Run was a masterpiece of poise and control — Waley-Cohen knows that the vicissitudes of fortune are an essential part of Grand National day. “I like things like sky-diving and hang-gliding,” he says, “but all those activities have been rigorously tested and controlled. It’s not like jumping a fence where you don’t know what is happening on the other side. For all you know, the horse in front of you has fallen and is just lying there like a bear-trap.

“That’s why I say it’s like bungee-jumping, because when you bungee-jump, there’s a moment where you go past the point of no return and you think ‘That was stupid!’ It’s the same at Aintree, every time you go over a fence.”

Waley-Cohen does have form at Aintree, he has won around the course three times on Libertine. And there may also be a certain backhanded advantage in being an amateur. When Telegraph Sport's own Marcus Armytage won the National here, riding Mr Frisk in 1990, he spent six weeks preparing mentally for the race before he actually rode it.

But that sort of focus can be difficult for a professional with dozens of different commitments every week “There’s a quite surreal feeling in the weighing-room before the Grand National,” says Waley-Cohen. “At no other time in the calendar is there such a fine margin between victory — which means realising a lifetime dream and claiming eternal glory – and defeat, which could mean a trip to hospital and going home with an empty horse-box. The spectre of death is never far away here.

“You sit there with three other jockeys in your little area of the weighing room and you know that, statistically speaking, only one of you is going to complete the race. Of the others, there will probably be one refusal, and the other two are likely to have falls — a relatively soft one and a much more uncomfortable one.”

Put it like that, and the idea of performing 30 bungee-jumps sounds positively reassuring by comparison.